…isn’t it about time that Apple put those iLife “Shop For” commands to good use?
You know the ones I’m talking about. Shop for GarageBand Products, Shop for iMovie Products, Shop for iPhoto Products, hell, even the lowly iDVD gets a Shop for iDVD Products in its application menu.
And what you get when you choose one of these commands is a short trip to a catalog page from the Apple Store.
Whoop-de-friggin’-do.
What I’d like instead is something very much along the lines of the App Store. When I select one of these commands, please Apple, launch iTunes and transport me to to the iLife Store. Here I’d be able to purchase and download additional loops and effects for GarageBand, filters, titles, and effects for iMovie and Final Cut; iPhoto filters; templates for Keynote and Pages; themes for iDVD; packs of Web doohickies for iWeb; and effects and backgrounds for iChat/Photobooth—those made by Apple as well as those from third-parties.
Oh, I know, having the mostly yearly option to release a new version of iLife and iWork adds to the bottom line, and giving users the ability to trick out their current version of these suites might eat into that same line. But from the glass-half-full perspective I’m sure you can hold back enough features to make these suites as tempting as previous releases. In the meantime, you add a little something to the pot by selling add-ons that you might have previously bundled and add a little something more by working out deals with third parties. In the process, take a third of the transaction as you do with the App Store.
Seems to me that you’ve built the infrastructure to make the financial side of this work. Now it’s simply a matter of doing a few deals and building the hooks into the next iLife and iWork updates.
Please?